Mercenaries 2: World in Flames Review

A predictable but satisfying destruct-a-thon.

Though much has changed in the gaming industry in the three-and-a-half years since the original Mercenaries, developer Pandemic banks smartly on the first game's proven formula in this sequel, relying on one of life's few constants: Blowing things up is fun. A lot more fun than death and taxes. World in Flames doesn't do much to evolve that formula, but this is one of those rare cases where that's alright -- Mercs still does open-world destruction best, and despite a plague of idiotic A.I. drones and some other nagging annoyances (left over from the first game), this sequel is almost everything it needs to be.

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Shifting settings from North Korea to Venezuela, World in Flames' environment is a lot more varied where it counts -- thick jungles, rocky canyons, dilapidated shanty towns, and large expanses of water keep things visually interesting (if not a bit too reminiscent of underrated open-world action title Just Cause), while the diverse terrain makes basic exploration more engaging. Considering its massive size, the game world still feels meticulously built -- but you'll occasionally get hung up traversing steeper slopes and moving past larger foliage. Realistic, perhaps...but it feels like a by-product of unfinished animation rather than a physical restriction.

The main appeal of such a world is that every object within it can be destroyed with enough firepower. From individual trees to entire offshore oil rigs, nothing is safe from your more destructive impulses. You can simply drive through the former (and man, is it satisfying to not get stopped dead in your tracks by even the skinniest of trees, as in Grand Theft Auto and most every other game with a car), while the latter requires some carefully placed C4 or a full-on airstrike to take down. Combining game-wide destruction with the already dynamic nature of an open world makes for dozens of laugh-out-loud enjoyable scenarios. I was tasked with taking out a target on the far side of a giant hill; not knowing what else lay beyond it, I simply loaded up a truck full of allies and rocketed over the top of the hill. I easily cleared the outer wall of what turned out to be an open-air base and landed dead center in a nest of enemies. My friends and I hopped out, our ride was promptly blown up, and the scene turned to absolute chaos. With so many objects in play and so many different ingredients for destruction, no two base raids feel exactly alike -- even if they make up the majority of the tasks at hand.

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Like the first Mercs, World in Flames has you running missions for different factions (the People's Liberation Army of Venezuela and Universal Petroleum initially, and eventually Pirates, the Chinese Army, and the Allied Nations) while dealing with the always-hostile rebel VZ forces, on your way to finding and taking down ultimate baddie drug lord Ramon Solano. The story is uninteresting faux-political drivel, but the structure of running missions for different forces against one another works well; it can be a bit too easy to piss off friendly factions (who won't give you work until you get back in their good graces), but you can undertake dozens of side missions to curry their favor. You'll also be tasked with tracking down new members for your crew, like a mechanic (who you can purchase more interesting vehicles from) and a jet pilot (who makes the more impressive airstrikes available). New weapons, airstrikes, and vehicles are constantly added to your arsenal and unlocked for purchase as you complete missions, and they're all available as airborne drop-offs whenever you need them.

World in Flames' mechanical additions work well -- you can grapple helicopters from the ground; a button-pressing minigame is tied into vehicle-jacking (it increases in difficulty as you swipe better vehicles); and you now have the ability to swim -- but not everything is quite so thought-out. All driving controls are mapped to the face buttons instead of the triggers and can't be changed. Loading subdued targets into a helicopter can cause headaches if you're not within the very specific loading zone. And having to regularly sift through menus to assign specific item drops to your three slots gets annoying (it should have just been a tiered selection system with a "favorites" section). Most notably, the A.I. of everyone in Venezuela is about one step above a box of rocks. It's laughable to think about the controversy leveled at the game from Venezuelan lawmakers -- while Mercs is a blast, I don't think it's what anyone would call "realistic." The idiocy of friendly units comes in handy at times, as they don't mind hopping right back into the backseat of vehicles after being pulled out of the driver's seat, but it's frustrating when they're too easily distracted or too moronic to do something as simple as enter a building -- a necessity for finishing many missions.

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Of course, you can circumvent some of the annoying buddy problems by adding a real buddy into the mix via full online co-op throughout the campaign. This seems like a killer feature -- and it should be -- but the execution isn't ideal. Unlike Crackdown or Grand Theft Auto, you can't be on opposite ends of the world from one another and must stay within a relatively restrictive radius. So when a mission to steal and deliver a single car asks you to deliver two cars instead while playing co-op, it's all well and good, but the fact that you can't drive too far ahead of your partner (while under fire from scripted attackers) makes things far more taxing than they would be when playing by yourself. Some co-op sessions are also crippled with glitches, like not being able to get into vehicles or see your bullets or grenades on-screen; it's tough to tell whether it's simply a result of network latency, but it sucks either way. Playing through the game with a pal can work if you're willing to make some sacrifices, but otherwise, it ends up as more of a fun bonus than a critical feature.

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And that's about it. While Mercs doesn't do anything particularly new or interesting, the formula is inherently fun (as long as you enjoy blowing things up like I do). I can keep complaining about the quirks -- ridiculously repetitive voice samples from NPCs, a climax that consists of a trial-and-error button-pushing session -- but the wealth of smaller problems are insubstantial in light of the effective fundamentals. It won't light the world on fire, but this next-gen playground of destruction offers you tons to do (well, tons to explode), it's always enjoyable, and I dove right back in after the credits rolled.